The Last Notebook of Leonardo Read Online Free Page A

better go quick before they close!” He knew he couldn’t go with me, because he couldn’t go into a store without inciting a riot.
    Here is what I bought: A six-man mountaineering tent. I figured my dad was about the size of five and a half men, and I made up the other half. Two kerosene stoves. Six canisters of kerosene. A deluxe artic survival suit for a small person about my size. It was the kind of suit that you inflated with an air pump, and it bulged out around you and kept you warm even if you got dipped in liquid nitrogen. The picture on the tag showed two people, one of them in a deluxe arctic survival suit and one of them in an ordinary suit, both of them being dipped in liquid
nitrogen. The survival suit guy came out smiling, and the other guy came out crunchy. None of the suits would have fit my dad, so I bought a deluxe artic survival quilt that I figured he could wrap around himself if he needed it. Special snow traction boots for both of us. A hammer for hammering in the tent pegs. Rope to tie our supplies together. And an enormous metal wagon, about ten feet long and five feet wide, to put everything in. The store clerks were happy because they made a great sale. I was a good customer, so they didn’t worry that I was only a kid. I told them that my father was a mountain climber and I was buying supplies for an expedition we were going on together. Which was exactly the truth. The whole lot was incredibly expensive, but we didn’t have a problem with money. My dad had lots of money in his bank account.
    I had to drag that wagon all the way home, and it nearly dislocated my arms it was so heavy. I couldn’t bring it inside, and I couldn’t leave it on the sidewalk outside because a lot of people in New York would have liked to nick that tent. It was a nice tent. So I rang our bell and waited for my dad to come out. He was very excited when he saw all the things I had bought. I could tell that the spark of adventure had gotten into him, and he wasn’t gloomy anymore. He was his usual self again.

    â€œJem, it’s fantastic!” he said, throwing his arms up over his head and laughing. “It’s perfect! You did a great job. That wagon’s big enough to fit a lot more stuff. I’ll go bring down the important things, and we’ll have to leave the rest behind. You wait here.”
    He brought down his two boxes of da Vinci papers, and two kitchen chairs, and the kitchen table, and a wooden drawer full of drinking glasses and plates and forks and knives and things like that, and piles of clothes and pillows and blankets, and a radio, and the salt and pepper shakers, and sixty-seven books from the library, and cooking pans, and an electric fan in case we ever got too hot somewhere that had an electric outlet, and a blender that was broken but he thought maybe he could fix someday, and a nice wooden bird feeder that had never been used and was still in its package, and a box of powdered laundry detergent so we could wash our clothes, and a big plastic garbage can to wash our clothes in, and toilet paper and bath towels and shampoo, and the shower curtain, even though it was getting a little yellow from soap, but it might come in handy if we ever settled down somewhere nice, and last of all, carried delicately all by itself, his framed picture of Leonardo as an old man, all hairy and lined and with slightly crazy eyes, wrapped up in plastic food wrap to keep out the damp.

    I had never seen my dad at work before. Even though his hands were three times larger than a normal person’s, they zipped around here and there at high speed and it seemed like he had about a million fingers. He tied everything together with ropes and made it fit into the wagon neat and square like a puzzle. Then he tied our tent fabric over the top of the pile to keep off the snow. He was done in a minute and a half. The wagon was stacked up about ten feet tall, taller than he was, and I